Iceberg Interactive announces Endless Space will be released via digital distribution on July 4th, celebrating Independence Day by liberating this 4X strategy game from Amplitude Studios. "With the success of the gameís beta program and tremendous feedback from the community, we couldnít be more excited to be able to get the final game in front of fans," says Mathieu Girard, CEO at AMPLITUDE Studios. "We look forward to even more players getting their hands on Endless Space as we deliver an intuitive, yet immersive experience for all types of players." Here's more:

Publisher Iceberg Interactive and developer Amplitude Studios invite players to celebrate the holiday this year with the launch of Endless Space, for Windows PC. Coming to digital distribution platforms on July 4, 2012, Endless Space is a 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) sci-fi strategy game that pits eight civilizations together in galactic conflict.
[...]
Set to launch after a highly successful beta campaign via Steam that saw over 20,000 fans registered on the community website, Endless Space is a deep 4X strategy game covering the space colonization age, where gamers can control every aspect of their empire: Economy, Diplomacy, Science and War. As one of eight unique civilizations, players must strive to control the entire galaxy through trade and diplomacy or technological advancements and strategic warfare. Begging the question, will they conquer the galaxy with an open hand or a closed fist?

Additionally, Endless Space marks the first Amplitude Studios title to take advantage of GAMES2GETHER, a new platform that lets the community track the development teamís objectives, progress, and achievements, while gaining access to early builds, providing feedback, and discussing the gameís future with the developers themselves, giving them an active role in the future of Endless Space.

The main issue I still have with Endless Space is Warp. There's no choke points, no intercepting or blocking units until they reach your planet. I also don't like the cutscene battles; if I could just play my cards and have a quick battle, I'd be happier (last I checked, autoresolve never leads to anywhere near as good an outcome as manually fighting). AI diplomacy is also a tad simplistic, and I tend to play 4X games singleplayer so that sucks.

Drifting back off topic: we should be able to do massive space battles these days. I'd love to see a new X-Wing/TIE Fighter game with a few hundred ships flying around at once. I'd expect that a competitive Space Sim would be cheaper to make than most other genres these days; you have ships, effects, and UI to create. No levels, no level design, no environment art, little to no character art, few if any animations...

Wowbagger_TIP wrote on Jun 26, 2012, 15:14:I've wondered about the Evochron games. Have never really heard anyone say much about them. Tempted to maybe pick one up, but have never quite pulled the trigger on it. Afraid it will suck I guess.

They come with a free trial, so that shouldn't stop you.

Definitely a lot more sim-like than Tie Fighter or FS2. The training section is a firehose. Will give it a try later once I have 90 minutes of undisturbed time to focus on it.

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." -- Bertrand Russell (I think...)

Wowbagger_TIP wrote on Jun 26, 2012, 15:14:I've wondered about the Evochron games. Have never really heard anyone say much about them. Tempted to maybe pick one up, but have never quite pulled the trigger on it. Afraid it will suck I guess.

Freespace 2 was most definitely not a sim and was actually very good, people still mod it today for other games! Xwing was also not a sim..the most you had to do was balance shields/weapons/Engines...Ohhhh complicated!?! NOT...but it still captured the fun from the movies and gave the impression of depth, I guess it had some. We're not asking for newtonian physics here like Iwar (which rocked) but for fucks sakes, bring us into the next gen. I dreamed by now we would be able to have rollicking space battles among huge capital ships of which are detailed surfaces modelling, interiors you can fly into ect. But all we get is table top strategy games. fuck me.

I think people (at least me) mostly just want an updated XWing v TIE Fighter. Seems a no brainer considering the drek with the existing IP that keeps getting rehashed by LucasArts continually.

I mean, the game really doesn't need much outside of graphics update and netcode update (though, even that might be okay now that there's not a mix of dialup and cable playing) and you have a AAA title right there. Mix in the original campaigns from the individual Xwing and TIE series and *bam*.

Fair bit of work I'm sure to 'just' redo the graphics, but I can't see a title done that way failing. You would have the IP to entice the casual player, and at its core it's an arcade shooter just with some sim intricacies in terms of balancing shields vs weapon regeneration and such to allow for those more capable to excel.

If I recall, Freespace is much more sim-like and so the barrier to entry for a casual player is much higher, plus it's not a 'recognizable' (outside of a specific market) IP. Wing Commander is little stronger of an IP but the terrible movie I think killed the casual interest in it.

Interplay didn't really do anything to market Freespace 2 though and it came out in a pretty tough market transition period. Every once in awhile a great game just doesn't sell well which is a damned shame, even the original Deus Ex took years to make its 1.6m or whatever. I'm sure there's still a market and I don't see any reason the budget would have to be massive either. I doubt it's a Call of Duty sized market demographic but I bet there is money to be made there, much like adventure games and whatnot. One big boon these days is the near standardization of the 360 controller since almost no one has an actual joystick anymore.

Anyways Endless Space is a whole different beast so it's not like the demographic will necessarily overlap anyway.

Broadly speaking, it seems like whenever a space shooter does come out, people pooh-pooh it and say they'd rather have a new TIE Fighter, Wing Commander or Freespace game. And Freespace 2 was a legendary bomb.

There are a few going on at Kickstarter (http://spacesimcentral.com/?p=784), but it's hard to say that any space shooter is going to sell millions of copies and justify a colossal budget. The recent 4X games haven't necessarily been AAA titles, but people don't seem to settle for anything less in a space shooter.